As the fifteenth of the eighth month drew near, Kaguya-hime would look at the moon and weep bitterly. When the old man pressed her, she confessed, "I am not of this land. I am from the capital of the moon. On the fifteenth, people will come to take me back."
When the emperor heard this, he sent two thousand soldiers of the six guard divisions to the old man's house. He set a thousand on the earthen walls and a thousand on the roof, and together with the household they kept watch without a gap. The old man shut the door of the nurigome, a room walled on every side, and held the princess in his arms, while the old woman guarded her. "When they come for her," the old man raged, "I'll gouge out their eyes with my nails and crush them, grab them by the hair and drag them down." But the princess said, "Please don't say such things. However tightly you shut me in, you cannot win against the people of that land."
Late in the night, around the hour of the rat, the area around the house shone brighter than daylight. People riding on clouds came down from the sky and stood in a line some five feet above the ground. The soldiers lost all will to fight, as if something had taken hold of them; when they tried to draw their bows, there was no strength in their hands, and they could only stare blankly at one another.
One who seemed to be the king of the heavenly beings called, "Old man, come out," and the shut door of the nurigome opened by itself, and the princess went out. She left a letter for the old man, who lay weeping on the floor, and entrusted a letter and the elixir of immortality for the emperor. When the heavenly beings were about to put the robe of feathers on her, she said, "Wait a moment," and added a poem to the emperor: "Now that the time has come to put on the robe of feathers, I think of you with all my heart."
Once the robe of feathers was on her, even the heart that had loved the old man was gone. The princess boarded a flying carriage and, with about a hundred heavenly beings in attendance, rose up into the sky.